Apple chick
by GlacialSwan
Summary: You act helpless and dumb. You pout and you squeak and you open your big brown eyes and act like those big smart males just know everything."..."i don't know who i am" Mikan said


The thought was from my aunt's pocketbook...Its about Hotaru, her thoughts and her love life?? hehehe...

* * *

Mikan doesn't remember, but when we first met, I bit her cheek, and the later she wet the ground.

It was in kindergarten, and Mikan says she can't remember much before third grade. Maybe it was because her earlier memories w2ere so painful. Mikan seems to forget anything that hurts. Not me. I remember the bad times.

Not that kindergarten was a bad time for me. When I look at my kindergarten class picture, I am proud of me as I was then. I am standing between Tobita Yuu and Umenomiya Anna, and I am taller than either one. Yuu is smiling with his mouth open, too wide for a smile and not wide enough for a laugh. His eyes are blurred because just before the photographer snapped the picture, he shifted his eyes over toward me. He looks terrible, although Yuu was at his cutest in kindergarten. It was downhill all the way for him, starting with first grade. Anna is smiling a huge, deep smile. She is so proud to be standing necxt to the most popular kid in the class – which was me.

Mikan wasn't in the picture because she didn't start kindergarten until nearly Halloween. Her family had just moved here from Saint Louis because her mother thought it would be easier for her to adjust to a school if she started fresh in San Francisco.

Mikan doesn't remember any of this, but I do. I can remember everything about her and the day she first arrive in Mrs. Weedon's morning kindergarten class. I was oplaying in the doll corner with Yome Kokoro and Ogasawara Nonoko. The three of us were lying on the floor making believe we were dead babies when Mrs. Weedon asked us to look up and meet a new classmate. Nobody was supposed to move because we were dead, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that both Koko and Nonoko were peeking.

" You're cheating," I hollered at them.

"Hotaru!" Mrs. Weedon said in her soft, little voice that turned up at the end. I left off glaring at Koko and Nonoko and looked over at her. Next to her stood Mikan and her mother. Mikan's mother was nodding and smiling the way grown-ups do when they are nervous. Mikan was holding on very tightly to her mother's hand and looking hard at me. I guess she didn't like what she saw because suddenly her lips began quivering and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

Everything about Mikan was fat then. She was wearing a blue-and-white checkered dress with a red cat on one pocket. From under the dress, her pale whit, fat legs billowed down into white socks and red shiny shoes. I couldn't take eyes off her. I had never seen anybody with a face like hers. It was pale white, except for her cheeks. Just looking at her cheeks made my mouth fill saliva. They were large, round, and very red. Like apples. I loved apples in kindergarten. I still loved them – especially those big, round, red McIntosh apples. And Mikan's cheeks looked like two shiny red McIntosh apples.

I stood up and moved closer, fascinated. Mrs. Weedon saw me coming and said encouragingly, "This is Imai Hotaru, Mikan. She is one of the friendliest girls in the class. Maybe Hotaru can show you around."

Up closer, Mikan's cheeks looked even more delectable than at distance. Under the tears that still glistened on them, Mikan's cheeks shimmered like apples under water. I came closer.

When I tell it, it sounds as if everything happened quickly, but as I remember it, everything moved in slow motion. Even the voices of the adults are slowed down in my mind.

Very slowly the grown-ups spoke to each other as Mikan's eyes fastened themselves in terror on mine. She stopped crying and stood hypnotized as I approached, licking my lips. Above, there came the sound of adult laughter, but Mikan's anguish was written all over her face. I felt it, but could not understand her terror. All I could think of was the taste of apples.

"Now Hotaru-chan," said Mrs. Weedon, "why don't you show Mikan where we put our clothes, and . . ."

But I struck then. My teeth fastened themselves on one of Mikan's cheeks, and she screamed. I didn't scream and I didn't cry, but I was bitterly disappointed. The cheek didn't taste good.

Roughly I was dragged away and shaken by Mrs. Weedon. "Why?" she wanted to know. "Why?"

I could not explain, so I was told to sit down at one of the tables and lay my head down until I could behave. I kept my head down a long, long time. My disappointment was unbearable.

Even though I couldn't see anything, I could still hear. Mikan yelled for a while. Her yells sounded like hiccups. In between yells she said very clearly, "I want to go home! I want to go home!" I was miserable because now I understood that look of terror in her eyes and I realized that she was right and I was wrong. I felt like humiliated and I hate Mikian. I put my hands over my ears to drown out the sound of her voice.

Later, Mrs. Weedon came over to my table and sat down next to me. I couldn't see her because I still had my head down on the table but I knew she was sitting there.

"hotaru-chan," she said.

I buried ,y head deeper in my hands.

"Alright, Hotaru-chan,"she said.

Keeping my head down, I manage to move my body away. I wanted to show her that I didn't like her anymore, and I had like her very much up until that day.

"You can sit up now, Hotaru-chan."

I shook my head. No.

"Hotaru-chan," came Mrs. Weedon's voice, "It's no good biting. If you are angry, you have to find some other way to show it. If each of us went around biting people who made us angry, we'd all be full of holes."

I felt the tears rising in my eyes. How wrong she was! How unfair!

I sat up, "I wasn't angry!" I yelled at her. "I wasn't"

"Then why did you bite Mikan-chan?" she asked, looking at me, puzzled.

I couldn't tell her. Now I realized how silly it was. Here I was, a big girl of fove years old, as my grandmother was always reminding me – mixing up cheeks and apples. How could I tell her?

"I wasn't angry," I said.

She didn't press the point, and I was allowed to rejoin my classmates. Mikan now was one of them, and I kept on looking at her with hate.

"Silly pig face!" I said to Koko about Mikan, and he laughed.

"I bet she has cooties," I told Shoda Sumire.

The feeling was definitely anti-Mikan as the morning progressed. Mrs. Weedon kept miving her from one group to the other, her bright, cheerful voice encouraging kindness. But none was forthcoming.

We all went out to the yard at recess to practice the dance our class was going to perform for the parents during Halloween party. Everybody had been working on a scary mask – some of us were ghosts or witches or devils. We were going to stand in a circle and sing our spooky song"

_Lock your doors in Halloween_

_Spooky shapes can be seen_

_Don't dare stop us as we fly_

_We will scare you if you try_

_Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!_

We should be wearing costumes with our masks while we sang our song. Then at the whoos, all of us would break into a dance where we whirled around each other and flitted back and forth across circle.

It was while we were standing on the circle and singing that it happened. Mrs. Weedon didn't like the way the song sounded the first time we sang it. She couldn't hear the boys, she said. It was halfway through the song the second time – I cant remember I had just finished singing _Don't _and was about to sing _dare_ when I saw Kitsuneme suddenly stopped singing and point.

"Look!" he cried

everbody looked. Some looked and continued singing, whiled others looked and stopped singing. In any case the singing had stopped completely by the end of the line. Nobody sang after _fly_.

Kitsuneme was pointing at Mikan. She was standing in the circle just like verybody else. Her mouth was even shaped in a circle as if she had been singing. But we knew right away that Mikan had been doing something else because down on the ground a long , dark, narrow stream moved quickly out from between Mikan's legs towards Luna Koizumi who stood next to her.

Luna leaped up and fled.

"Look at Mikan-chan did, Mrs. Weedon. Look what she did!."

Everybody looked except for Mikan. She was trying not to look, and her whole face was now red – not only her cheeks. It made me feel better seeing all of her face red – not only her cheeks. Because I now knew for sure there were no apples there at all. It was just a red face – a sad, humiliated red face.

"Baby!" somebody snickered.

"I bet she has cooties," Anna said to me.

Mika stood inside a ring of laughter, and she shuddered. It made me angry, suddenly, seeing her stand there, humiliated. It evened the score. I didn't hate Mikan anymore. I knew how easy it was to make a mistake. We had something in common.

I broke out of the line and hurried toward her.

"Hotaru!" I heard Mrs. Weedon warn.

Mikan put her hand up as I drew near. On her left cheek I could see very plainly two small horizontal marks. In her eyes I could see the same look of terror.

"I'll show you where the girl's room is," I told her and took her hand.

That's how we became friends.


End file.
